Re Plato essay

[Iris Sirius]

Yao know what would be awesome? If Al was actually, Bowie.  He.s
hypersmart, he could play her.
On Jan 21, 2013 12:41 PM, "alice wellintown" <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
wrote:

> How do we or how should we read Plato?
> As a younger lady, I read Plato and thought that Socrates was just the
> badest badass of all the philosophers. He has nija moves and can punch
> holes in a locamotive faster than a falling building in a single
> bound.
>
> Of course, I hadn't even studied a handful, when I became convinced
> that Aristotle was, as the famous phrase sez, "the philosophers
> pholosopher."  And, when I discovered that the "Socrates" of Plato's
> dialogues was but a shadow of the real philsopher, the great old greek
> with the buff physic, with the bumps and lumps and pecs of an American
> footballer, pointing to the heavens under the brass lamp hangind in
> the museum down the block, well...and when I discovered that
> Aristotle, who actually cared about getting the ideas of others in the
> history of ohilosophy right, unlike Plato, who distorted and reduced
> their ideas to punchingbags, well, but then, I began to see that logic
> was riddled with problems and that often itz driving force is getting
> things right, or winning the day....and I decided that success was not
> a very good way of going about evaluating what was valid....and that
> what follows from beginning, or in the beginning, and moves to the
> heavens often involves a great Fall, and, as I was raised by
> Jesuits...I began to think that what comes at the end of days may
> make valid what we put away as childish things, though these will be
> valid enough in their time, for everything there is, of course a time,
> the whole determining the parts or the other way about. But this, even
> though I always suspected those Jesuits, for who didn't suspect them,
> of putting to much on a transcendence they, half-agnostically preached
> bu did not care to calculate the graces of...and anyway, a unified
> theory or theories smacks of conspiracy...and so, after losing my
> cherry, I decided to consider the preterit again, so back to
> Aristotle, sort of, only this time I would focus on the losers. Yes,
> dialctic is certainly Not about winning the day, in fact, itz not even
> against the day, but about losing, losing one's position, one's
> struggle against the other by taking turns at talk. Or better song.
> The battle of songs or poems.
>
> I hope that the President and the Congress will try a little Plato in
> the coming years. But first, they shall need to surrender the idea
> that winning is a win, that a win-win is about dialogue. The pragmatic
> American, however, is essentially a student of Aristotle. So were all
> our Metaphysical Club members, pragmatists, but, there is, in the very
> Principles of the American, something Creative. This nis something
> Plato would ban and Aristotle would turn into a vocational school for
> the Booker T Boyz in the hood, but this Creativity is what makes of
> us, we the people, we Americans, the most innovative people in
> history.
>
> Now if only we can elect someone who believes this is more than mere
> rhetoric.
>
> Did enjoy that poem, though a halmark ripp-off of Walt.
>
>
> > Mm. Ages since I read Pirsig. Interesting idea for an argument, though, I
> > admit. It was my impression that Pirsig mostly got Plato pretty wrong, in
> > that Plato, like his teacher, was all about the nature of dialectic and
> what
> > might be gained in terms of human understanding through mastering the
> > method. Was writing down those examples of dialectic inquiry useful in
> > expanding human understanding? Was it useful in expanding the
> manipulation
> > of human understanding? Was it to posterity a gift and a bane alike?
> Maybe
> > it depends on who reads Plato, and how.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130121/c5b56bb8/attachment.html>